Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul, who began writing in the 1950s, won numerous coveted literary awards during his career during which he wrote critically acclaimed novels such as “A House for Mr Biswas”, “In a Free State” and “A Bend in the River”.
In a statement, his wife Nadira Naipaul called him a “giant in all that he achieved” and said he had died surrounded by “those he loved having lived a life which was full of wonderful creativity and endeavor”, the BBC said.
Born in Trinidad in 1932 into an Indian family, Naipaul was raised in relative poverty. He moved to England at 18 after receiving a scholarship to University College, Oxford.
He wrote his first novel while at Oxford, but it was not published. He left university in 1954 and found a job as a cataloguer in London’s National Portrait Gallery.
His first published novel, ”The Mystic Masseur”, written in 1955, was poorly received at first but the following year won the first of his literary awards, the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize for young authors.
He received a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth in 1989.
“When I learnt to write I became my own master, I became very strong, and that strength is with me to this very day,” he told Reuters in 2010.
]]>https://en.smanews.org/nobel-prize-winning-author-v-s-naipaul-dies-aged-85-bbc/feed0Artist captures war as seen by children – toys includedhttps://en.smanews.org/artist-captures-war-as-seen-by-children-toys-included
https://en.smanews.org/artist-captures-war-as-seen-by-children-toys-included#respondThu, 12 Jul 2018 15:25:51 +0000http://en.smanews.org/?p=6696SMA News – Agencies

U.S. photographer Brian McCarty wants you to see the horrors of war, but through the eyes of a child.
There is no blood or mangled bodies. Instead there are pink dolls and blue tanks. A bird from a video game represents bombs falling from the sky. An elephant symbolizes a lost sibling.
McCarty’s most recent work was set in Mosul where thousands of civilians where caught up in the fight to oust Islamic State. Social workers say children who witnessed the violence will suffer trauma for years.
He uses art-therapy drawings and interviews with the children to depict their accounts using toys.
“I harness that to tell their stories and give it to an audience that normally maybe wouldn’t look,” said McCarty, 43.
The children draw the horror, the loss, and the harm they suffered. Often, their accounts are presented with symbols which McCarty then recreates with toys. The result is a mix of the realistic and the absurd, with a hint of pop culture.
McCarty describes it as “reality with a dose of sugar”.
“It is from that childhood innocence, that very pure place of telling the story but not telling the story, and that is what is so powerful,” he said.
“People will connect to this. Especially for Western audiences where it is so easy to cast people in war zones … as ‘the others’,” McCarty said in an interview in Beirut.
“It gets past that because these are just toys. They are just plastic totems of real people.”
A boy taking part in one session near Mosul in May drew an adult elephant with two calves. While he colored in the parent and one of the calves, he refused to color in the second which he said represented his dead sibling.
In his recreation, McCarty placed a toy elephant in a pool of dirty water standing behind a calf. He then superimposed a faded image of the second calf to represent the dead sibling.
]]>https://en.smanews.org/artist-captures-war-as-seen-by-children-toys-included/feed0Saudi Artist, Abu Bakr Salem, Deceased after Long Struggle with Diseasehttps://en.smanews.org/saudi-artist-abu-bakr-salem-deceased-after-long-struggle-with-disease
https://en.smanews.org/saudi-artist-abu-bakr-salem-deceased-after-long-struggle-with-disease#respondMon, 11 Dec 2017 11:58:03 +0000http://en.smanews.org/?p=1618SMA News – Al-Arabia Net

After a long struggle with disease, Abu Bakr Salem, the prominent Saudi artist, died on Sunday. Salem was born in 1939. He was a composer, signer and poet with Hadhramaut roots. During 1970s, he travelled among Beirut, Jeddah and Cairo before he finally settles in Riyadh. For the rest of his life, he frequently visited his relatives in Adan. Salem was well-educated, and his culture had a direct reflection on his works and his ability to sing and compose several types of music. For the last 10 years, Salem suffered from heart disease and performed major open-heart surgeries in Germany before he eventually died on Sunday.
]]>https://en.smanews.org/saudi-artist-abu-bakr-salem-deceased-after-long-struggle-with-disease/feed0After Half a century of its establishment, Hadhramaut Association of Heritage, History and Culture holds a documentary photo exhibition for Al-Makla Broadcastinghttps://en.smanews.org/after-half-a-century-of-its-establishment-hadhramaut-association-of-heritage-history-and-culture-holds-a-documentary-photo-exhibition-for-al-makla-broadcasting
https://en.smanews.org/after-half-a-century-of-its-establishment-hadhramaut-association-of-heritage-history-and-culture-holds-a-documentary-photo-exhibition-for-al-makla-broadcasting#respondSun, 01 Oct 2017 17:37:48 +0000http://en.smanews.org/?p=569 SAMA News

This morning a documentary photo exhibition was held by Hadhramaut Association of Heritage, History and Culture in celebration of the 50th anniversary of Al-Makla Broadcasting with attendance of‎ prominent culture, arts, social, media and education figures. General director of Al-Makla directorate, Awad Ben Hamel, chairman of Hadhramaut Association of Heritage, History and Culture‎ Mr. Khaled Said Mudrik, Dr. Wagdy Abd El-Rahman Be Wazeer, director of culture office and Mr. Saleh Said Ben Amer, former director of culture office opened the exhibition. The attendants went through the exhibition showing the history of Al-Makla Broadcasting since its establishment 50 years ago and its role. Al-Makla Broadcasting started its broadcast in 1967 with the‎ words “Al-Mala Broadcasting – Voice of the National Front”. The exhibition included pictures of prominent media men who served the station and went to work in other places. ‎
]]>https://en.smanews.org/after-half-a-century-of-its-establishment-hadhramaut-association-of-heritage-history-and-culture-holds-a-documentary-photo-exhibition-for-al-makla-broadcasting/feed0Kaspersky Lab co-founder accepts invitation to testify to U.S. Congresshttps://en.smanews.org/kaspersky-lab-co-founder-accepts-invitation-to-testify-to-u-s-congress
https://en.smanews.org/kaspersky-lab-co-founder-accepts-invitation-to-testify-to-u-s-congress#respondThu, 14 Sep 2017 21:18:34 +0000http://en.smanews.org/?p=250Eugene Kaspersky, the co-founder and chief executive of Moscow-based anti-virus firm Kaspersky Lab, said on Thursday he accepted an invitation to testify to U.S. lawmakers later this month over the security of his company’s products, but that he needed an expedited visa in order to do so.

“I appreciate and accept the invitation to testify before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, and if I can get an expedited visa, I look forward to publicly addressing the allegations about my company and its products,” Kaspersky said in an email to Reuters.

The invitation came a day after the Trump administration told U.S. government agencies to remove Kaspersky Lab products from their networks, saying it was concerned the company was vulnerable to Russian government influence and that using its anti-virus software could jeopardize national security.

The committee said on Thursday it invited Kaspersky to testify on Sept. 27. U.S. government and private sector cyber experts were also invited.

Kaspersky has repeatedly denied allegations that it is a pawn of the Kremlin or that it conducts espionage on behalf of any government.

In an op-ed published by Forbes on Thursday, Eugene Kaspersky defended his company, which he said had been targeted for nearly five years by unsubstantiated rumors that have yielded no proof of any wrongdoing.

“I’ve repeatedly offered to meet with government officials, testify before the U.S. Congress, provide the company’s source code for an official audit and discuss any other means to help address any questions the U.S. government has about Kaspersky Lab – whatever it takes, I will do it,” Kaspersky wrote.Reuters

]]>https://en.smanews.org/kaspersky-lab-co-founder-accepts-invitation-to-testify-to-u-s-congress/feed0Facebook fined 1.2 million euros by Spanish data watchdoghttps://en.smanews.org/facebook-fined-1-2-million-euros-by-spanish-data-watchdog
https://en.smanews.org/facebook-fined-1-2-million-euros-by-spanish-data-watchdog#respondMon, 11 Sep 2017 15:56:25 +0000http://en.smanews.org/?p=211Facebook has been fined 1.2 million euros ($1.4 million) for allegedly collecting personal information from users in Spain that could then be used for advertising, the national data protection watchdog said on Monday.

The fine stemmed from an investigation into the social network company conducted alongside similar probes in Belgium, France, Germany and the Netherlands, the AEPD authority said.

The 1.2 million euro fine is a fraction of Facebook’s quarterly revenue of about $8 billion and stock market capitalization of around $435 billion.

AEPD said it found three cases in which Facebook had collected details such as the gender, religious beliefs, personal tastes and browsing history of its millions of Spanish users without informing them how such information would be used.

Facebook did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment.

According to the AEPD, the tech giant did not sufficiently inform users about how it would use data collected on third-party websites, and did not obtain consent to use it.

“Facebook’s privacy policy contains generic and unclear terms,” the authority said in a statement.

“The social network uses specifically protected data for advertising, among other purposes, without obtaining users’ express consent as data protection law demands, a serious infringement.”

Using cookies, Facebook also collects data from people who do not have an account on the social network but navigate other pages containing a “like” button, AEPD said.

Facebook users’ activity can also be tracked on third-party sites, and the information collected added to what is already associated with a Facebook account, AEPD said.

It said it also found evidence the network kept information for more than 17 months after users closed their accounts.(Reuters)